The invention relates to the transporting of polyethylene drums by hand trucks and more particularly to the combination of such drum with a circlet or lift ring which is mounted on the drums to be engaged by the hook of conventional hand trucks to secure the drum to the trucks.
Current use of polyethylene or other synthetic material drums has brought about a need for convenient means for securing these drums to a conventional hand truck. The conventional type of hand truck has a vertically slidable, downwardly engaging, hook which is used to secure a regular steel drum with an upstanding rim to the hand truck to enable trundling the drum. The bottom of the hand truck has a platform or pair of arms or a fork which is engaged under the drum after which the hook is moved upward and the truck tilted forward to engage the hook over the rim of the steel drum. The drum and truck are then tilted backwards, with the drum secured to the truck by the hook and platform, to enable moving the drum to different locations.
Utilizing the conventional hand truck with a polyethylene or other synthetic material drum poses a problem in that these drums typically have substantially rimless axial ends so that there is no robust and non-yielding protrusion to be engaged by the hand truck hook as there is in the case of steel drums. These plastic drums may have a boss with bung hole on one or both ends of the drum. It has been proposed to use a type of slidable hook which will attach over the bung hole boss; however, this requires a modification of the hand truck hook causing additional expense and furthermore, the hook may slip from the boss resulting in loss of control of the drum.
The bung hole of the drum may also be on the side of the drum rather than on one end of the drum. In this location, even the modified hand truck hook will not be operable to secure the drum to the hand truck.